It’s the body – the Word of God. It is the spiritual body of Jesus Christ in abstract form and the information content which structures that form – the body inhabited by the Spirit of God. Contemporary philosophers of science, like Stephen Meyer, author of Signature In The Cell (HarperOne, 2009), recognise that it is information which distinguishes living organisms from inanimate matter, and the same holds for the spiritual body. It is the inherent information content, as appropriated by spiritual revelation, which distinguishes the bride of Christ from the religious cults and denominations. The spiritual bride is comprised of the Word – the whole of the Word and nothing but the Word, it is fitting to add. She is one with her Lord who is the Word – she, the bride and mystical body of Jesus Christ. And what distinguishes the living Bride from the dead denominations and religious organisations is this – that the Word of God has life, and as such it is characterised by organic depth and integrity.
This, again to emphasise, is also the hallmark of the natural body. Nature, the natural universe, is unfathomably deep in its workings. It cannot be reduced to a rational conception in terms of a finite set of variables. And if nature cannot thus be reduced, neither can the Word of God – the Word which is the logos of nature. The inspired Word of prophetic utterance, as the self-disclosure of a higher mind, is transcendent of all rational conception – as states Isaiah 55, exalted above the thoughts and ways of man as the heavens are exalted above the earth. Which further explains why, through the ages, the Word of God has been elusive. It explains indeed the historic failing of the church, insofar it is informed not of the Word, but interpretations of the Word – divisive creeds, each emphasising certain aspects of scripture to the exclusion of others. Although grafted into the Tree of Life – the denominational creeds – they are out on a limb, so to speak. Sooner or later they run out of scripture, and compensate by filling the gaps with rationalisations – extraneous notions which have no part of the body.
This explains why the body is sick and all torn up.
To illustrate let us consider again the natural body. Metabolism of the natural body is regulated by enzymes, complex molecules which act as catalysts for myriad chemical interactions. Many of these enzymes oppose each other in function, and the health of the body depends on their balance, their due proportion and interaction, as regulated by yet further enzymes. Too much of one, to the exclusion of others, will kill the body, even though each one is good and necessary in itself.
This is a perfect analogy of the spiritual body. Religious cults and denominations typically run with some exclusive idea, turning it into an overarching doctrine. Sooner or later, as stated, they run out of scripture, eventually reaching a dead end of spiritual stasis. Which explains why denominational Christianity is dead – why indeed we have something called Christianity, which is not Christianity at all. While it might have qualified as such back yonder in the age of Reformation – under the anointing of the cherubic Man (see Revelation 4) wherein rational exegesis was the state of the art – this is the age of the Flying Eagle, an age of restoration and spiritual revelation. The healthy body, as described, is comprised of the synergy of myriad opposing agents, and thus it is with the spiritual body. It is comprised of the whole of the Word, with its often seemingly contradictory notions – a proposition by which the rational mind is altogether stymied. The rational mind cannot cope with the Word of God, and radical attempts – as it were, of putting new the wine into old bottles – in terms of their consequences, typically range from the ridiculous to the tragic. Indeed the carnal or rational mind, as Paul reminds us, is enmity with God. Only the mind of Christ can take this Word and make it perform as intended.
And, indeed, we have the mind of Christ – if we are born of water and blood according to the scriptures.
As for the rational mind, it looses itself in the abyss, the incommensurate gulf between the rational conception and the irreducible complexity of the materia mystica, the primordial substance, which is the Word of God. We see this exemplified in the increasingly abstract formulations of academic theology, as in the increasingly indirect means of natural enquiry in the physical sciences – both engaging in realms increasingly remote from the data of sensory experience. From the rational standpoint, as stated, the well is infinitely deep, such that the rational mind is, on analysis, is commensurate with the abyss. The Word of God, by contrast, for all its organic depth and wholeness, never departs from the nexus of immediate experience. This indeed is the hallmark of the visionary and mystical, that it is grounded in the embodied experience.
And so ... it’s the body, the Word of God. It is not to be held at arm’s length – dissected, interpreted, doctored, explained – it is to be received by faith. As states the scripture, a body hast thou prepared me – which truth holds for the spiritual body as it does for the natural. Only the mind of Christ can cross the gulf and produce the body, which crossing is the new birth by the Cross of Christ – the crossing of Jordan, metaphorically, which is death to the self. This is one of the scary notion of scripture, the truth of which, however, is liberty, salvation, and the power of the Holy Ghost. And it is a dangerous doctrine, subject, like all great truths, to misapprehension and consequent radicalism. But again we can point to the Word as a sure corrective in that any misapprehension will, surely and in some signal manner, depart from the Word. But the mind of Christ, the Holy Spirit, inhabits, upholds and affirms that Word – the Word which is the spiritual body of the bride of Christ.